


Synapses

by Nanagrb



Series: Klaroline AU Week 2017 [3]
Category: The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: F/M, Klaroline, Klaroline AU Week, body swapping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-22
Updated: 2017-10-22
Packaged: 2019-01-21 11:04:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12456320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nanagrb/pseuds/Nanagrb
Summary: Klaus and Caroline are both members of an international agency researching humans and computers. They are chosen to travel inside a matrix. However when they are returned to their corporeal forms, instead of being in their own, they are in each other's. Great.





	Synapses

**Author's Note:**

> This little piece is my contribution for Klaroline AU Week 2017 on Tumblr (nanaswhispers) day 3 : Sci-fi and apocalypse.
> 
> Hope you enjoy it!

Caroline officially hates the day when she said yes to this fucking mission.

Something told her not to do it, and still, being headstrong, loyal to her words (even drunkenly said) Caroline Forbes, she had signed up the no liability clause just before heading to the experimental capsule.

Now, after quite the tumultuous journey through the web, instead of being brought back into her own body, she was in Klaus'. Not that she minded his body. At all. She appreciated it very much.

She just preferred seeing it with her own two eyes instead of admiring it guiltily in the mirror in her private locker room. Touching it with her own feminine fingers was much more enjoyable than with his own manly hands _(she recalled dearly how she had let them touch her in so many naughty ways only hours before)_.

The Universal Agency for Intelligence Research, the closest sibling mixture to both the CIA and NASA, except it's international, had been researching how to transfuse the human mind into networks and artificial intelligences for close to 13 years now. They were to the final stages of the project.

It certainly would prove useful in many ways: protection against cyber attacks, defense against some of the aliens and their extraterrestrial technology, the Earth does or not have a treaty with, and most certainly for more hushed and silenced activities such as launching attacks, spying or reversing their own tech on foreign forces. The possibilities were almost endless if one had enough of a nefarious mind.

Speaking of, Rebekah, Klaus' sister, behind her beach blonde sleek hair and stiletto heels was an ill tempered, bad-ass scientist _(the feminist in her feels reluctantly exalted: her personality is a fucking nightmare)_.

She was one of the brightest stars in engineering and mechanics. At 23 years old, and as much brilliant inventions as she had luxurious accessories (A LOT), she had conceived a machine capable of synthesizing the energy from the synapses present in the human brain so that one could identify it even amongst trillions of billiards of artificial and even organic data signatures.

After that, not willing it seems, to give too much power even in 2032 to a pretty, young and ambitious woman, the UAIR (and it's armada of leading old, stubborn and prejudiced men _when will that finally change?!_ ) had engaged a no-name, sniveling, brown-nosing _male_ Doctor in mechanics to create a way of sending the human brains into the system.

It had taken months of research and inactive, money-wasting waiting, up until Rebekah Mikaelson with her 6 inch pink heels and vintage Prada bag, strode in the research department, fed up, and presented them with her miniature, working (she tried it on lab rats first, proof needed and all that) prototype and schematics.

However much the grumpy geezers grumbled behind closed doors, they never doubted her again.

She finalized her creation after only a few weeks, the capsules where the organization's agents would lay down and be put into stasis for the time of their journey through electronics or alien technology systems were now operational.

_(Even though Klaus struggled to say it, and despite how much they bickered and argued, a brother had never been so proud of his sister, she saw it in his eyes every time Bekah would start rambling things nobody could understand except her, and sometimes Enzo.)_

Her abilities, as extraordinary as they were couldn't be used to the fullest because no one had, for a long time, been able to harness the natural energy humans created into numbers, until her future partner / rival / enemy had been recruited by John Gilbert. Lorenzo St John is a genius, the guy was a perverted jerk in real life with an ego the size of the Eiffel Tower, but no one on this planet or any other could deny that he saw biology and numbers in a way nobody else did. Only his emotionally stunted mind could have made _the_ equation allowing the encryption of energy from the human synapses so that they're transferable into artificial data and the agency's matrix.

_The sexual tension between those two was through the roof, especially when they argued about science. (“Nerds”, she scoffed.)_

And, most days, she moderately liked those two, not very much, but still she didn't hate them.

Usually.

Now, she wanted to strangle them while screaming away her frustration in their faces.

How did two brains that were named (by themselves) “the most brilliant” in their generation, do something as… **idiotic** as interchanging their bodies when their consciousnesses were brought back from the traumatizing wonders of the Internet?

Rebekah had assured her, that since the agency has sent them as the last experiment before the official inauguration of the program, that it was only a mere formality. That it was just a way to assuage any lingering doubt in the mind of the administration and diplomatic corps, but that she was 93.5% certain of their successful, safe recovery from the system.

She should have known something fishy was hiding underneath, Rebekah had only insulted her in her usual passive/aggressive fashion once in her mini-speech, much, much too nice for the harpy that the only female Mikealson sibling usually tried to emulate.

_Let's just say that family dinners would be quite full of tension for a good amount of time._

Caroline shoved as deep as she could her frazzled nerves, tried to regroup herself to the best of her current ability.

She should have met with Klaus (herself?) exactly 07 minutes ago in their shared office space.

She was delaying the inevitable.

She just couldn't ignore her fiance any longer. Even if they were in each other's bodies. Meaning that her significant other, the guy she had strongly disliked for three years before a drunken sexual tryst, and then managed to somehow build a somewhat sane and working relationship with over the last two years, would speak with his words through her mouth; that he would feel her body's urges and primal needs; her mind's instincts and subconscious thoughts.

Caroline could just sense in a weird detached but eerily connected way how different his body felt and functioned.

She could feel the effect of the testosterone coursing through her current corporeal form. How it affected her nerves and muscles, the way they reacted with each thought she had. The constant low-key arousal was weird too.

Those were only simple biological changes stemming from the fact he was male. And then, there were also things that were simply Klaus.

His brain just worked on an entirely different wavelength than hers.

Caroline, even though very much a planner with control freak tendencies, was of a more boisterous and spontaneous nature. She thought thinks deeply but didn't overthink _(most of the time, right now this situation called for it, so ti did not count, okay?)_. She was, most of the time a gentler soul, tolerant of others, achieving her goals by winning everybody over with sweet smiles and soft words. Her spouts of anger were usually quick but frequent, yet never truly deep, so they dissolved themselves quite quickly.

Klaus, on the other hand, was a much more contained person. The unending, dangerous calm water kind of guy. He thought thinks through every single angle and possibility, never letting anything out of his reach. Every emotion he had, was deeply felt, but also deeply hidden. Yet, he was also forceful: he demanded, took and conquered at will without any consideration for anyone else. And when his anger took over, it was a destructive and untamable force.

Everything that made them a great team and couple, every similitude and difference they had, that usually proved them to be a yin to a yang, made it very difficult for Caroline right now.

Not only was it in the first place weird being in the body of your fiance, the said body didn't obey her as her own would.

Caroline needed a few moments to herself right now, to gather her thoughts and plan ahead the course of action they needed to do in order to switch back, but Klaus' instincts pushed her to go face head-on not only her counter-part, but also every single person responsible for this mess and force them to resolve this situation swiftly.

_Great, right? She was screwed…_

But, she was still Caroline Forbes, and even in another body her identity and persona didn't change, so she would face this insignificant bump in the road just as strongly as she would any other.

She had to _at least_ convince herself before meeting her own gaze mixed with Klaus' that it would not destroy everything or else she'll have a panic attack, and she didn't suffer from one of those since the eve of her final test at the Academy.

She reserved it for their Wedding Day. However far away it currently seemed.

She resolved herself to deal with it. So, Caroline grabbed her courage with both hands and headed for their office.

When confronted with their deep chestnut wooden door, and the golden plaques with

“ _Caroline Forbes & Niklaus Mikealson_

_Special Agents, Grade 9.”_

written on it, she hesitated for a short second. Still, her body was trained to be alert, and with Klaus' controlling nature, she really shouldn't have been surprised when she heard her own voice speak up from behind the smooth wood.

“Are you ever going to enter Sweetheart?” _(was her voice really that high-pitched?!)_

She grasped quickly the handle and opened the door.

Let's just say, seeing one's own body in front of you after decades of living in it was deeply disturbing.

“Ugh, I don't know what's more weird: hearing my voice but with your words, or the clothes you put on my back, Klaus. What came over you? Where did you even find this horrendous green frilly… thing? And, grandma shoes, really?”

Klaus flashed his trademark fond smirk/smile at her, and that's when the realization they really were switched hit her. Caroline was never able to mimic that.

And, suddenly, she too did something, Klaus was not in the habit of doing: she cried.

In the years to come, when she would recall that particular episode, the sight of her face but with his expression of horrified surprise, would prove to be comical. Right at that instant, it only made her cry harder because it solidified the fact that everything could really go wrong.

“What if they don't switch us back? Or if they do, but like, suddenly you like planning Christmas parties and I start painting hundreds of paintings of you? Or maybe instead our personalities are inverted? Maybe it will make us hate each other again! You will never love me again! We won't have sex again! And we'll never get married! Oh god, the marriage! What if even in the case they do put us back in our bodies, it's like in 6 months?! The wedding is in less than three weeks Klaus! Do we cancel it? Or do we hold it? What, should we act like everything is as usual, I don't think we will be granted leave to reveal details of a top secret project to our civilian families… The honeymoon! Oh no, the honeymoon!”

Her entire rambling meltdown was interrupted with bouts of sobbing and sniffing.

And after Klaus' legs crumbled under her, and the force of the unfamiliar tears that were released, she saw her own approach her carefully, like a baby animal walking on it's hooves for the first time.

The sensation of her smaller, thinner and softer hands embracing her the way Klaus did when she was sad, her head on his chest, his arms around her shoulders and his hand softly combing through her hair only in her reverse this time, was almost as comforting as it proved to be usually.

“Shush, love.”

“But…”

“No, Sweetheart. Everything is going to be fine. I will make sure of it, alright?”

She reluctantly nodded, but her fears weren't assuaged. He continued speaking with his own powerful and calming tone but with her own vocal cords.

“I will go myself and oversee everything. Rebekah **will** correct her bout of idiocy in the shortest term, or else she will pay, I can assure you that. And then, we will get married just as you have planning for the last six months, in the reserved venue, at the scheduled time and with the invited guests. So don't worry, love.”

Her anxiety didn't leave her completely, but the edge of panic creeping in earlier was chased away for now.

“And Love, don't mind the honeymoon, I have something planned that will blow you away… just as I will right now.”

She abruptly looked back up at her face and saw Klaus' teasing smirk directed at her.

“What? Don't give me that look! Every guy wonders about it and tries to suck his own dick once in their life, I have prime exclusive opportunity here. Plus, I am hot, and I can feel your body aroused since you entered the office in my body. So, what say you, dear, should we spice things up a little, _fiancée_?”

He wiggled obnoxiously her eyebrows, and Caroline laughed to tears.

Yeah, everything would be fine, she decided.


End file.
